Beginning with Cumulative Update 1 for Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2016, you must use an installer instead of the BbPatch Utility. BbPatch is deprecated, does not work with this version, and the BbPatch Building Block that installs the tool can be uninstalled.

Quality improvements

With this release, we are continuing our commitment to delivering strong product quality and providing a stable, reliable experience for educators and learners using Blackboard Learn today. We have continued to address the top customer-reported issues that are affecting the largest number of customers. The bug fixes and enhancements in this release are primarily focused on improvements to accessibility, language packs, assessments and grading, as well as Enterprise Surveys.

REST APIs

The 9.1 Q2 2016 release supports limited REST APIs in a Technical Preview. Administrators and developers can create integrations using REST APIs and secured with OAuth. Please note that we strongly encourage anyone making use of these APIs to thoroughly test their functionality. Please see the following articles on the Community site for further details:

Learn 2016 Theme

We're proud to share a new theme for Blackboard Learn 9.1 that provides a more modern look and feel. Most importantly, the Bb Learn 2016 theme significantly increases the responsiveness of the interface for small devices. The theme also incorporates elements from the new Blackboard design language including color, fonts, and spacing, for greater consistency between Blackboard Learn, Collaborate Ultra, and the Blackboard app.

Java 8 Update

The Q2 2016 release now uses the latest version of Java from Oracle.

We strongly encourage anyone who has a Building Block to test it against Java 8 before installing the Learn 9.1 Q2 2016 release onto a production environment. Please see the following article for further details:

Minimum system requirements to run Java 8: 8GB per Learn application server, 32GB per Oracle server.

SAML 2.0 Authentication

The SAML Building Block provides a way to authenticate, authorize, and use single sign-on (SSO) with the latest SAML 2.0 protocol, which focuses on improved security, improved end user experience, and easier IT administration. This building block provides Just-in-Time provisioning capabilities, a commitment made to the InCommon Net+ community as part of our certification process.

VALUE rubrics

As part of the Association of American Colleges & Universities' (AAC&U's) Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative, the VALUE rubrics contribute to the national dialogue on assessment of college student learning. Educational professionals from over 100 higher education institutions collaboratively developed 16 VALUE rubrics to use the most frequently identified characteristics for measuring success in key learning outcomes.

For Blackboard Learn users who are interested in using these rubrics, we are making them available for download and import. Each rubric has been built and formatted appropriately so it can be imported to your courses and used anywhere you can align and evaluate with rubrics today. The downloadable rubrics are available in US English only because this is how they were authored by AAC&U.

Accessibility

The screen reader will not announce Quick Links modal when modal is closed, and Grading Journals will now work with a screen reader.

Email handling

Clients who have control over their user's email addresses and aren't susceptible to DMARC-based rejections now have the option to turn off DMARC handling. In the bb-config.properties file, the setting for bbconfig.email.use.dmarc.from.override can be changed to False to disable DMARC handling.

Localization

We've made updates to the Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean language packs to correct translation issues and grading workflows. Clients who use the Korean language pack can globally replace username with user ID.

Security

The 9.1 Q2 2016 release resolves a set of security fixes to core features of Learn 9.1. After the issues are released through all supported 9.1 versions through a Cumulative Update or Building Block, a Security Bulletin will be released to provide details on the individual fixes.

Virtual Classroom, Chat

Support for Virtual Classroom and Chat course tools will be ending with this release. Institutions using versions of Blackboard Learn that still have the Virtual Classroom and Chat course tools can continue to use them; they will continue to function beyond June 30, 2016. However, Blackboard Support will no longer accept reported issues with the tools and bugs beyond this date, and security issues will not be addressed. Please see the following article for further details:

Snapshot Client Tool

No new versions of the Snapshot Client Tool will be issued with this release. This is a standalone application used to process remote SOAP transactions and is different from the Snapshot Command Line Tool and Snapshot Controller. The Snapshot Command Line Tool will be included in releases until the Blackboard Learn 9.1 Q2 2017 release. The Blackboard Consulting Snapshot Controller will continue to work because the Snapshot Command Line Tool is still included.